Hi to my Forum Friends,
In the discussion begun by IamShouting! titled "How Can Anyone Deny This?" -- our Friends Sofa and RoadPuppy have a private dialogue going regarding science and God -- I would guess trying to decide which they see as God.
Sofa tells RoadPuppy, "Road, Sorry but you are wrong. Or perhaps partially correct. 'Freethinker' has a meaning quite different from "free thinker." The Freethought movement is specifically defined as a movement that uses science and reason to discern reality and moral value. A Freethinker would never embrace a religion, for example. But a 'free thinker' certainly might.
After being exposed to the likes of Bill Gray, IamShouting, and other nuts here -- the premise of the movement is looking more and more attractive to me. I don't know if I should thank or hate Bill for that."
Sofa, while you have a basic understanding of the Freethinkers Movement, according to the following article, the Freethinkers Movement does not exclude itself from the realm of religion.
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FREETHINKERS
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/freethinkers.aspx
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 |
Freethinkers: those who arrive at conclusions, particularly in questions of religion, by employing the rules of reason while rejecting supernatural authority or ecclesiastical tradition. The freethinkers believe that independence of thought from such authority leads all men to essentially identical conclusions concerning morality and religion. The name came into general use in the 18th cent. after the publication (1713) of Anthony Collins' Discourse of Freethinking Occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect Called Freethinkers. The movement took different forms in different countries. In England it was intimately connected with deism but did not break completely with traditional Christianity.
It took a more radical form in France. Voltaire renounced all connection with Christianity, and the Encyclopedists broke with religion altogether. Freethinking also has an important social side and influenced the philosophies of the Freemasons and, in France, the Culte de l'Être Suprême. In the United States the organizations established to further freethinking include the American Rationalist Association, the American Secular Union, and the Freethinkers of America. The International Order for Ethics and Culture, organized at Bern in 1908, is designed to investigate the ethical factors in society without theological or metaphysical bias.
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An American wing of the Freethinkers Movement is:
THE SECULAR COALITION FOR AMERICA
http://www.secular.org/node/53
This web site tells us:
The Secular Coalition for America is a 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the non-theistic community in the United States. We are located in Washington, D.C. for ready access to government, activist partners, and the media. Our staff lobbies U.S. Congress on issues of special concern to our constituency.
Among its member organizations we find: • American Atheists, • American Ethical Union, • American Humanist Association, • Atheist Alliance International, • Camp Quest, • Council for Secular Humanism, • Institute for Humanist Studies, • Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, • Secular Student Alliance, • Society for Humanistic Judaism
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Sofa, as you can see -- this organization, which is daily bombarding our Congressional leaders and the White House on behalf of these Secular/Atheistic organizations, does not have the ANY intentions of allowing Christians to have ANY say in what happens in our American society today. This is why it is imperative that Conservative Christians get off their butts, stand up, and tell our leaders, locally and nationally -- that we are a Christian Nation and we will not stand by and allow the Godless Left to destroy our society, our families, our Christian faith, and our nation.
Since you, like all atheists and secularists, and other non-believers -- see science as a god -- in lieu of the true God; I suggest you read the article below. It is taken from the web site of Apologetics.Com. For all our Forum Friends who will visit this web site, in the left panel you will find a number of great apologetic articles which you can click on and read. I just found this web site because of an event coming up at Biola University and have read two articles so far: "Quantum Physics and Christology" and "Evangelical Liberalism and Post Conservative Theology" I love the motto or tag line of this web site: "Challenging believers to think and thinkers to believe." It's a great web site. Check it out.
Note: Bold and italic emphasis in the following article is mine.
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND CHRISTOLOGY
Written by Jeremy Livermore | 26 May 2010
http://www.apologetics.com
Our goal is to show that there happens to be "an analagous relationship between quantum physics and Christology." There can be peace in the minds of non-believers and believers alike that it is intellectually viable to believe that Jesus Christ is God. Because just as science and scientists have encountered and embraced the paradoxical field of quantum physics, so can non-believers and believers encounter and embrace the paradoxical dual divine-human nature of Jesus. We will investigate paradoxes in quantum physics by examining parallels between the historical discoveries in the areas quantum physics and Christology.
Dr. John Polkinghorne, a distinguished physicist holding a Ph.D. in theology, as well as a Ph.D. in physics, advocates that science and theology move from experimental/experiential data, to models, to theories, to a more refined theory that has greater explanatory power and scope.
Around 1900, initial models in physics were developing to explain the phenomena of light. Light seemed to posses wave like properties – meaning that light seemed to have an oscillating spread out flow to it. But later on when Einstein and Max Planck studied it, they studied light as a particle phenomena – meaning bullet like concentrated dots. So wave/particle duality became a topic of major interest very quick. Is light a wave or is it a particle?
Scientists like Niels Bohr tried to figure it out with Newtonian Classical physics. But that turned out unfruitful and unwise. Other challenges continued. In 1900, Planck showed that light energy must be emitted and absorbed in discrete 'quanta' to explain blackbody radiation.
In 1905, Einstein showed that the energy of light is determined by its frequency, where E=hf. In the 1920s, de Broglie and Schrodinger introduced the concept of Standing Waves to explain these discrete frequency and energy states of light and matter.
In 1925, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Paul Dirac, and others made different important discoveries related to the quantum field. Interestingly Einstein spent a lot of time trying to disprove theories of the quantum field. Turns out that a great thinker like Einstein focused in on this because of his scientific commitments to general and special relativity theory. Yet, today, both relativity theory and quantum physics somehow have their established place in science.
It turns out, that for the last 80 years, perplexed physicist have had to live with this paradox as well as the fact that light seems to behave like a particle at times and like a wave at other times. Keeping in mind that paradox does not mean contradiction, rather it means mystery or something not fully known.
Whether or not Jesus Christ is fully God has proved to be an intellectual barrier of belief for many people of the last 2 millennium. Many cannot get past such a paradox. But the theology of Christ’s nature (Christology) has developed with challenges moving from the different models, to preliminary theory, to overarching theory that has explanatory power and scope. Theories, such as, Adoptionism, Docetism, Arianism, Semi-Arianism, Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, Eutychianism.
The Bible teaches a self emptying of certain divine characteristics, in Philippians 2:5-11, to assume humanity. The Bible also teaches clearly that Jesus was fully human. So in theology we are left with a Paradox: a pre-existent fully divine Logos in human form with infinite divinity and finite humanity in one person. In that, Jesus is 100% God, but 100% Man. Similar to the paradox in quantum physics with the wave particle dual nature of light. If the quantum physicist experience mysterious paradoxes in his field of research -- why would belief in the paradox of the divine-human nature of Christ be difficult?
But the paradox is beautiful in that it reveals a depth to a God that is inexhaustible and will keep us thinking about Him forever! Polkinghorne says that “The essential thing about seeming paradox, whether in science or in theology -- is that it should be forced upon us by experience and not just embraced in a fit of unrestrained speculative exuberance.”
Just as the basic location of an electron is not determinable and all we have as knowledge of it is based in probability -- until we find it. This is a good analogy for our quest to Jesus. Perhaps all of Jesus seems improbable for us to figure out and he isn’t known fully until we experience him fully. Perhaps this is why Paul says, "Now we know in part, but then we shall know him fully."
The scientist and theologian must be an advocate and an explorer into the realms of reality that he knows not. Perhaps then, without fear and reservation, the scientist and theologian will find each other in the same spot -- in front of the real God that is the source of all reality and truth.
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Many Christians reading the statement above, “The essential thing about seeming paradox, whether in science or in theology -- is that it should be forced upon us by experience and not just embraced in a fit of unrestrained speculative exuberance” -- might be bothered thinking this is, in some way, belittling "faith." And, the non-believer will likely be exuberantly declaring, "See, we told you! It is what you can experience in the physical realm that it the real truth. Don't give us that 'faith' jazz."
Well, you are both wrong. What I see this telling us is that our "experiences" as we walk with the Lord -- from the moment we are saved and become an infant in Christ -- to becoming mature in Christ -- is what builds our faith.
By grace, through faith, we are saved. But, at that point, we are infants in Christ. We cannot walk the walk, we cannot talk the talk -- at least, not with any maturity. Then, like all journeys -- we begin to walk with the Lord.
First step: associate yourself with a Bible-teaching, Christ-centered church. Step two: get yourself involved in a weekly Bible study group. Step three: daily study the Word of God and be in prayer, that you may grow in and mature in your knowledge of His Word and His will for your life.
Keep doing this -- and one day you will look in the mirror and see a mature Christian.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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